A friend then said why don't you grow a sweet potato, it's so much easier, there's not a lot of digging as such and the plant itself isn't poisonous. She then gave me one of hers which had already started to develop a stalk and leaves.

So I planted it in the patch were my lettuces gave up the ghost during the flood, gave it a bit of water and waited for it to grow. Soon enough it developed long tendrils which looked set to take over the backyard if I let it, some lovely green leaves I have since been told you can eat and pretty little white and purple flowers which look a bit like Morning Glory.

Hmm, now what, how can you tell when something is growing and when to harvest it, so I went back to my friend.

She said that the ground underneath will start to bulge, or you can have a bit of a poke around and you will feel the tuber, then you just dig it up. The longer you leave it the bigger it gets but you can dig them up when they’re small if you like. That way you don’t have to dig them all up at the same time.

The more I groped around in the dirt the bigger and twisted it seemed to get and then it felt like there was another one, my goodness. I finally decided to snip it off at the top where it’s attached to the stalk and leafy bits, loosen the dirt around it a bit and pull. I heard it make a little cracking noise but it came up, I found the little bit at the bottom snapped off in the pulling. Wow and I thought I was a bit twisted. It was even bigger than I thought. I was then able to pull up a couple more, a little smaller but still impressive.

My friend told me that you only harvest them as you need them, so I decided not to look any further and only dig around some more when I want to use them, that way they will always be very fresh.  Though by the size of the big one I better start thinking about it

Hmm, roasted sweet potato, or maybe sweet potato mash with a little cinnamon or with butter and chopped garlic, I could also make a sweet potato soup or sweet potato pie, yum.

The only trouble with stuff that grows underground is you are never quite sure when they are ready to harvest. Like things that grow above ground on trees and shrubs you can see quite clearly, they turn the right colour but things underground don’t send up a little flag that says ‘I’m ready.’ Even if you buy a plant from a store they tell you a lot about how and where to plant it but not much on when to dig it up, so to some degree I am guessing. I suppose when you have done it a few times your guesses are a little less hit and miss.

The next thing I need to look at is my ginger. It was one of the first things I planted when I put together my raised garden bed, that would be about eight months ago. The plant grew well and there seemed to be lots of stalks or fronds or whatever you call the grassy leafy things but now they seem to be dying back a bit so I don’t know if they are trying to tell me something or they are supposed to do that. They haven’t had any flowers and I’m sure I’ve seen ginger in the stores with decorative, abstract looking flowers, so maybe I’m doing something wrong.